With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia eBook

The Terrorists were completely demoralised, so that
the army advanced to Glasoff, 80 miles east of Vatka
and 60 miles south of Koltass. We were now only
about 300 miles east of Petrograd, and there we waited
for seven months for the Archangel move, which never
came off. For some time the country was so absolutely
clear of enemy forces that small parties of men passed
unmolested from Glasoff to Archangel and from Archangel
to Glasoff. Eventually the Terrorists got the
correct measure of this Northern expedition, contained
it with a slight screen, and concentrated huge forces
to press us back over the Urals once more.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DECEMBER ROYALIST AND BOLSHEVIST CONSPIRACY

The tenure of a dictator’s office is very uncertain.
He issues his orders, but if the army chiefs can escape
from executing them they do so, on one pretext or
another. The Russian character is most peculiar
in this respect. It will obey one thing only—­force.
Patriotism and public spirit, as we know them, do
not exist to any great extent. Every man looks
at every order from the personal point of view—­“How
will this affect me?”—­rarely, if
ever, “How will it affect the country?”

It is remarkable how much Koltchak had already accomplished,
but it seemed that his career might end at any moment,
in spite of every precaution of his friends.
Of these he had not many; no real dictator should
expect to have any. No man will have many friends
in Russia who puts personal questions second to the
public welfare.

The preparations for the Perm offensive were well
under way, when a dispatch came from General Dutoff,
stating, “That in view of the pressure by our
forces on their left the Bolshevik leaders had decided
to, what they called, ‘organise their enemies’
rear.’ That seventy of their best propagandist
and most capable agents and officers had passed between
his columns and were now distributed somewhere in our
midst.” All we could do was to wait, and
see where this treacherous movement would show itself
first.

The fact that Koltchak had declared for the calling
of a National Assembly, elected by universal suffrage,
to decide the future government of Russia, so soon
as order was restored, had shattered completely the
vision of the old army officers of a quick return to
absolutism. His declaration against extremists
on either side had driven Bolshevik and Tsarist into
practically one camp. He was well known as a student
of English customs and institutions and a pre-revolution
advocate of constitutionalism. The Tsarist section
hoped that his assumption of supreme authority was
proof that he had discarded his democratic principles,
but gradually his official declarations to the representative
of the British Government leaked out and spread consternation
in the ranks of both sections of the Absolutists.
The Bolshevik leaders have never made any bones about